If you are new to State of Search or this is the first time you have read one of my blog posts there is one thing I try and do once in a while, thats a data download. In 2012 I spoke at SMX West with a presentation based on pulling Click Through rate data from over 100 independent Google Webmaster tools accounts and this time last year I wrote a post about the Mobile Revolution 2012 here on State of Search that used over 100 independent Google Analytics accounts. Well its about time to update the Google Analytics statistics with a focus on Mobile and Tablet usage for 2013

Tools you might Need

If your good with Google Docs or handling APIs then you can cut out the tools and go and have a look at:

So what’s the point; well in this scenario I’ve used Next Analytics and quickly taken 16 independent Google Analytics Profiles and within minutes exported over 120,000 rows of data (This is a small data set, for bigger data-sets I would personally recommend Analytics Canvas.)

Now its time for Some Big Data Fun.

A Simple Answer to Enhanced Campaigns

Towards the end of this month Google is automatically upgrading all Adwords Accounts to Enhanced Campaigns. One of the main parts of enhanced campaign is that advertisers no longer have the choice of whether or not display ads to mobile device and tablets. Much as this has annoyed many an advertiser and the general consensus is that is has driven CPC’s up – See Adobe’s full report from June 2013.

So how is Mobile and Tablet Traffic increasing? A look across the data can give a glimpse into why they made such a choice.

You can see the clear rise in Mobile devices from around 4% in January 2010 to actually superseding desktop briefly in May 2013 at 55%.

Key Events:

Iphone was first released in June 2007

The first commercial Android Phone was released in 2008

Ipad (Tablet) was first released in April 2010

Google’s Nexus 7 Tablet was released in 2012

So the Big data I have is a faction of what Google or the other big players are collecting just read Bas’s post “Yes your being spied on” but it does give us a guide on where things are headed.

Where do tablets fit in?

The graph below shows tablets and mobile devices separated as a percentage of visitors across the last 18 months.

We can see a steady increase, separating the devices does show desktop is still currently dominant.

What is the Most Popular Device?

The table below shows the percentage of visitors by device over the past six months, there is only really four two players.

Mobile Device

%

iOS

58.7%

Android

35.8%

BlackBerry

3.0%

Windows Phone

2.0%

The key to notice is the increase in Android usage, its predicted to be bigger than iOS, the graph below shows how it is changing. We see fluctuations in its usage but overall a steady increase.

The same can not be said for Tablet devices as iOS is still the far out leader.

Tablet Device

%

iOS

91.2%

Android

8.3%

BlackBerry

0.3%

Linux

0.1%

Usage by Location

It is important to note that the websites in my data set are UK based however the chart below shows the mobile usage of international visitors from the past 6 months.

South Korea shows a clear dominance of Mobile.

That it for now, go and download some of your own data and let me now what it shows.

Neil Walker started working as an SEO in 2002 and rose to become Group CTO for Swedish Marketing Agency “Online Group” in 2010 he moved to consulting with agencies, in-house teams and PR companies. In 2014 he formalised this work and founded Made Notable Ltd a boutique digital consultancy based in Manchester, UK.